Daniel 12:2 Commentary and Bible Study

This chapter gives us a picture of the church militant throughout the age of the gospel, but particularly at the end. Now in verse 2 this is moving to future glory. ‘Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth.’ Not all of them? Oh yes, all of them. Because the Lord Jesus Christ quoted these words from the Book of Daniel, and we find that in the Gospel of John and chapter 5. He interprets ‘many of them’, and he quotes it as ‘all of them’. So it's evident to us that when Daniel says ‘many’ he doesn't mean only some. He means all of them, but he chooses the word ‘many’ to indicate that the ‘all’ are actually very numerous. ‘Marvel not at this:’ says Christ, ‘for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, ²⁹ And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation’ (John 5:28-29).Those words ‘sleep in the dust of the earth’ are very interesting. You could preach a sermon simply on these words. Instead of the dust of the earth, the Hebrew could be translated ‘the land of dust’: ‘many of them that sleep in [the land of dust].’ Some people have said, ‘That just refers to the region which has very many deserts and much sand’, but it refers to more than that. This world is the land of dust. We believers die; our souls go to be with Christ, but our bodies are still here in the land of dust. It’s a dry place, this world. It isn’t a dry place and an arid place before you are converted. It’s everything to you sometimes. But when you are converted, you see that it is a dry place. You no longer love its delights, its entertainments, its characteristic ways of entertaining itself. It is a dry place and an empty place, a land of dust; it's unstable. It is constantly changing. You cannot trust it, and one day it will all be blown away. It is toneless like dust, and it is under judgment. ‘And many of them that sleep in the land of dust shall awake, some to everlasting life’. Everlasting life – that is the only time that phrase appears in that form in the Old Testament. ‘And some to shame and everlasting contempt.’ What a contrast! That is interesting because the King James translators have tracked the Hebrew very closely. ‘Everlasting’ isn't attached to the word ‘shame’, but it is attached to the word ‘contempt’, which may mean that death for the unbeliever is a baptism of shame which brings contempt from all.